{"id":6,"date":"2025-10-10T13:16:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T12:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nu-cusp\/?page_id=6"},"modified":"2026-05-02T11:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T10:41:09","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nu-cusp\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NU-CUSP is an interdisciplinary research cluster at Newcastle University.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bringing together researchers from across Sociology, English Literature and Law, NU-CUSP explores how utopian-thinking, speculation and prefiguration enhance our understanding of and approaches to contemporary challenges.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers within the group deploy utopian-thinking and creative, speculative practice and methods to investigate themes that include climate change and the environment, global governance, constitutional change, gender (in)equality, and social exclusion.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our members host literary reading groups, run zine making workshops, teach together, and meet up regularly to discuss our research aims. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contact<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you are working on ideas of utopia, speculative literature, or prefigurative politics, then please do get in touch. We would love to hear from you. Please contact Ruth Houghton<\/a> \u2013 ruth.houghton[@][newcastle].ac.uk <\/p>\n\n\n\n

People<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Ruth Houghton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Lisa Garforth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Ruth Houghton<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Newcastle Law School <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ruth.houghton[@][newcastle].ac.uk <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruth Houghton\u2019s work spans constitutional law and international law. She uses feminist utopias and theories of utopianism to interrogate questions of constitutional change. This includes, work on feminist utopias, feminist manifestos, and work that utilises utopia as a method in legal scholarship. She is a co-lead on the AHRC network with Davina Cooper and Mathias Thaler, and alongside Aoife O\u2019Donoghue she runs the Utopias Online Reading Group.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

AHRC Utopia and Failure: https:\/\/failingbetter.sps.ed.ac.uk\/<\/a>  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Utopias Reading Group:  <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Lisa Garforth <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

School of Geography, Politics and Sociology  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lisa.garforth[@][Newcastle].ac.uk <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lisa examines green utopian imaginaries in theory, literature and politics. She asks what resources we have for imagining better, greener societies, especially as the climate crisis intensifies. With Miranda Iossifidis and colleagues at Manchester Metropolitan University, she has just published a book<\/a> looking at science fiction reading practices. Lisa is currently working on a book about utopia and society.  She co-convenes NU Sociology\u2019s Imagining Pasts and Futures research cluster. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagining Pasts and Futures | School of Geography, Politics and Sociology | Newcastle University<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Emily Jones<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Jon Quayle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Emily Jones <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Newcastle Law School <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emily.jones3[@][newcastle].ac.uk<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emily is interested in reworlding and the pre-figurative in relation to international law and environmental law. Her work applies critical theory including feminist, queer, posthuman, postcolonial and critical disability studies, in that aim. She is currently working on projects focusing on intergenerational equity and the rights of future generations, the nonhuman in international law, the right to a healthy environment and reparations in international law.  <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Jon Quayle <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon.quayle[@][newcastle].ac.uk<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jon\u2019s work is largely focussed on Romantic-period utopianism, with an emphasis on the utopian poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley. More broadly, he is interested in the idea of \u2018utopian poetry\u2019 and the relationship between utopianism and form. He teaches widely on Romanticism and utopianism, including the Stage 3 modules \u2018Unbinding Utopia: 1750-1832\u2019 and \u2018Utopian Dreams, Dystopian Nightmares: The Forms of Science Fiction\u2019. He is currently guest editing, with Dr Stacy Gillis, a Special Issue of Utopian Studies<\/em>: Video Game Utopianism: Form, Narrative, Representation. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Screenshot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Aparna Sivasankar <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

School of English Literature, Language, and Linguistics<\/p>\n\n\n\n

aparna.sivasankar[@][newcastle].ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aparna is a creative writing PhD student, writing speculative fiction that interrogates society, culture and the climate crisis. Her project, \u2018Fantasies of the Anthropocene\u2019 is a series of novellas that radically reimagine what society could look like if we give voice and agency to landscape, treating humanity as part of nature rather than something above or beyond it. She runs the Newcastle University Science Fiction and Fantasy reading group and teaches creative writing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Charlie Toogood<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Newcastle School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics<\/p>\n\n\n\n

C.Toogood1[@][newcastle].ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charlie is interested in green utopianism, with a particular emphasis on what utopian literature from an earlier stage of industrial capitalism can say to our contemporary moment of climate breakdown. He is currently working on his PhD project entitled \u2018Looking Back into the Future: Environmentalism in the Victorian Utopian Imaginary\u2019, which introduces a cluster of fin de si\u00e8cle utopias to recent Anthropocene and ecocritical debates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stacy Gillis<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

School of English Literature, Language, and Linguistics<\/p>\n\n\n\n

stacy.gillis[@][newcastle].ac.uk<\/a><\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stacy is broadly interested in the complexities of gender and genre in popular culture; her interests in utopias are driven by these interests, with a focus on feminist and queer frameworks.  Her published work stretches across the long twentieth century, with a particular interest in detective fiction.  She has recently returned to an earlier interest in cybertheory to think about the form of video games, and is co-editing a SI for Utopian Studies<\/em> on video game utopianism.  She also has a burgeoning interest in critical university studies, which touches upon the utopian and the ideal.  Gillis co-convenes the Faculty\u2019s Gender Research Group, and is the Managing Editorial Lead for Feminist Theory<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Oscar Horton Chandler<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

School of Geography, Politics, & Sociology<\/p>\n\n\n\n

o.horton-chandler2[@][newcastle].ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oscar\u2019s work explores the intersections of utopian theory and everyday political praxis, with an emphasis on how \u2018imagining things otherwise\u2019 forms the basis for a constant, semi-conscious, experimental process, central to progressive organising and campaigning. He is currently writing up his PhD thesis, which combines empirical and theoretical work to investigate the experience of those swept up in the \u2018Jeremy Corbyn\u2019 phenomenon through a utopian lens. The aim is to explore how this moment opened up space for new and better worlds to be collectively imagined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Miranda Iossifidis<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

School of Geography, Politics and Sociology<\/p>\n\n\n\n

miranda.iossifidis[@][newcastle].ac.ukmiranda.iossifidis@ncl.ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Miranda’s research explores questions of how environmental and reproductive futures are mobilised in the present, drawing on feminist approaches and creative methods. Her current research projects focus on (1) the nexus of reactionary reproductive and environmental futures, in particular populationism in relation to ecofascism; (2) histories of resistance to populationism; (3) and using creative participatory methods to explore speculative climate justice futures. She also looks at the creative and collective negotiation of environmental presents and futures through speculative fiction, engaging with online methods to work with reading groups. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Aislinn Fanning<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Law School<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aislinn\u2019s work spans queer and feminist legal theories, equality and anti-discrimination law, constitutionalism and participatory approaches in socio-legal research. She uses queer and feminist approaches to interrogate seemingly settled legal concepts like \u2018equality\u2019. Her Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship project uses feminist utopian thinking and creative participatory methods to re-imagine a feminist equality law for the island of Ireland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NU-CUSP is an interdisciplinary research cluster at Newcastle University.   Bringing together researchers from across Sociology, English Literature and Law, NU-CUSP explores how utopian-thinking, speculation and prefiguration enhance our understanding of and approaches to contemporary challenges.   Researchers within the group deploy … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10333,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nu-cusp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nu-cusp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nu-cusp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nu-cusp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10333"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nu-cusp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nu-cusp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nu-cusp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6\/revisions\/141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/nu-cusp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}